The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) yesterday confirmed it will connect 30,000 homes to its enhanced fibre-to-the-home network before year-end to meet “overwhelming” demand.

Andre Foster, BTC’s chief executive, told Tribune Business: “The amount of folks who are demanding to move to our new network is overwhelming. We’re working so diligently, working seven days a week, to get customers off of our old network and on to the new network.”

BTC currently has 17,000 subscribers on its fibre-to-the-home network, and Mr Foster said another 5,000 homes will be added by the end of October.

The BTC chief added: “Our existing customers will migrate from the old network to the new. For the remainder of this year, or when we finish 2021, we expect to have a total of 30,000 houses now built with fibre-to-the-home in front of them.

“We have an overwhelming amount of demand for additional bandwidth. And our customers are receiving the highest speeds in the country, up to 600 megabits of services on the new fibre-to-the-home product.”

Mr Foster said the manpower and costs required for the fibre-to-the-home change over are expensive, and in the region of “millions” of dollars, but could not be avoided if BTC is to deliver quality service to its customers.

“We’re really pleased with the performance of our construction crews, our installation crews, just making sure that we elevate our network so that we can meet the demand,” he added. “From our perspective we look at it as an opportunity to just elevate the home, but obviously there is an upgrade cost.

“The 30,000 homes we will build this year, that represents millions of dollars of investment on behalf of BTC back into the community, and that comes in for not just upgrading services for our customers, but also the fact that we’re employing local Bahamian firms to help build that network.”